The Current State of the Florida Everglades Ecosystem and its Ongoing Restoration

A Graduate Defense Seminar by Darryl Marois, PhD Candidate in Ecological Restoration, who will present The Current State of the Florida Everglades Ecosystem and its Ongoing Restoration in 333C Kottman Hall.

The Florida Everglades is a unique wetland landscape that includes cypress sloughs and hammocks, sawgrass marshes, and mangrove swamps. It provides numerous ecosystem services from habitat provision for many endangered species to coastal protection from storms. Despite its beauty and value, it has continued to be impacted by both agriculture and urban development.

There is an ongoing restoration effort to return the natural water flows to the Everglades that have been altered in their quantity and quality by human activities over past decades. My research has focused on the Everglades landscape and has aimed to both demonstrate the value of this system as well as improve the methods by which it is restored. Much knowledge can be learned from the current state of this system and its ongoing restoration, which can be applied to impacted wetland systems worldwide.